The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Crack and powder cocaine are two forms of the same drug. The effects from use of crack and powder cocaine are relatively the same, according to researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996. The real differences between crack and powder cocaine are in how they are ingested and who is perceived to be the primary user of each drug.

Crack cocaine is smoked; powder cocaine can be smoked, snorted, eaten or injected. Not much of a cause for disparity there. But crack cocaine is largely associated with African Americans in cities; powder cocaine is largely associated with white professionals. The numbers are telling: The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that, nationally, 93 percent of those sentenced to prison on crack cocaine-related offenses were African American and Latino, but only 6 percent were white. More Caucasians use crack cocaine, but the law enforcement is targeted disproportionately at inner-city black communities.

In the late 1980s, Connecticut, like the federal government and other states, created harsh sentencing laws for crack cocaine. Crack was new to communities across America, and getting tough on this drug became a top priority, given the exaggerated publicity surrounding it.

This short-sighted approach did little to solve the problem of crack addiction in urban communities, but it created a pervasive problem in racial disparity in Connecticut's criminal justice system. A study conducted by the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research in 1999 found that whites account for 62 percent of the state population and nearly 50 percent of drug arrests, but they account for just 11 percent of drug convictions. African Americans make up just 8 percent of the population, but 38 percent of drug arrests and 58 percent of drug convictions.

Law enforcement has been hammering poor minority individuals for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine, rather than arresting big-time drug dealers. As long as the drug problem is seen as a problem of the black community, little will be done to attack high-end dealers and distributors that target white suburbia as well as inner-city black communities.

Many Connecticut legislators, including members of the black and Latino caucus, saw the impact of racial disparities in sentencing in their communities. They articulated the need for an effective drug policy. Their testimony on the Connecticut House and Senate floor spoke to the urgency of this issue, as well as to their determination to undo mistakes of the past. They succeeded in helping the bill pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives. On Thursday, the governor vetoed the bill.

The governor does not stand for racial justice.

Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-rangel0606.artjun06,0,7093117.story